Karl UbelhoerBarnegat, NJ

School:Tuckerton Elem

About Karl:

Will travel within a 20 mile radius.
I have taught for 7 years, first in NY in a K-1-2 classroom for students with multiple disabilities. For the last 6 years, I\'ve taught 6th grade in an elementary school setting in Ocean County NJ.
Through a county BOE initiative I\'ve worked on curriculum development and alignment , particularly with the Common Core State Standards.
I\'m particularly strong in Reading Comprehension and Writer\'s Craft development and can take on students across ALL grades/ages in these two areas.
Otherwise, I\'m best suited to tutor across all subject areas in K-8.
Because of my diverse background, I am also adept at breaking skills down and teaching them in diverse ways, for those who have struggled with a one-size-fits-all experience in the classroom.
Contact me for more details!

It is no secret that teaching involves plenty of planning. Usually, classroom activities tend to be structured. In fact, the more structured they are, the less stress teachers experience when delivering the new materials to students. Thus, preparation to classes is vastly important both for teachers and their pupils. On the other hand, however, rigid lessons tend to always bore students. At least, they substitute creativity with standardization, spontaneity with predictability. Teachers might often experience a pressing need to break the routine of a lesson with a fun distraction which will also serve as a practical exercise. It might be the right time to utilize a method of one-minute speeches.

What are the one-minute speeches and what purpose do they serve?

You might see it as an improvisational exercise to help students train their high-level thinking and practice creativity. One-minute pop-up speeches can be initiated by a teacher at some point of a lesson and continued by students who volunteer. The topics of these brief presentations might be either related to a specific topic or be spontaneous too.

How can the method of one-minute speeches be helpful in a school curriculum?

For a start, it helps to reduce stress that both teacher and students might experience in relation to a formal situation in a classroom. It introduces an element of a play in a structured lesson plan and, thus, serving as an ice-breaker in some situations and providing overall relief.

What are the advantages of one-minute speeches?

The main advantage of this type of an exercise is that it does not take too much time. It can serve as an immediate brain-switcher for students to set them onto creativity mode. Once the teachers pull the trigger by breaking the lesson and announcing the fun time, young people’s minds are activated. The method can be implemented at the end of the lesson or introduced somewhere in the middle, depending on the time that you have at your disposal. Your only guidelines for this exercise should be the presence of the introduction, body and conclusion, and the natural flow of the speech itself. Another important issue about these short speeches is that students are not appointed by the teacher, but volunteer to speak. Moreover, due to the fact that everything is done impromptu in the class, students don’t have the possibility to use an essay writing service like WorldEssays.com. So, teachers don’t need to worry about that.

Why do teachers need to use this exercise?

The truth is, there is too little structure in real life. Young people’s skills of finding creative solutions to different worldly challenges are crucial in everyday situations, and formal lessons do not provide students with the ability to overcome them. When extemporary speeches are practiced in the classroom, students develop a range of essential real-life skills, such as creativity, spontaneity, or quick decision making. One-minute speeches help to warm up students and let them expand their thinking abilities. At the same time, one-minute impromptu speeches can inspire, provoke, and persuade the listeners just as well as carefully planned and structured ones. Besides, the problem of a majority of students is that they usually can write a decent argumentative essay or give a great speech once they are prepared, but they lack the oral fluency. Practicing one-minute extemporaneous speeches will boost the students’ communicative skills, as well as their ability to process information on the go.

The best thing about tools such as one-minute speeches is that they can fit into any kind of subjects; they are not limited to use in a public speaking class. They can be utilized in any academic settings, whether they serve as distractors from the studying routine or train the ability to speak on the subject-relevant issues in a time-efficient manner. Tools like this might be used to facilitate communication between students as well — due to their brevity, one-minute pop-up speeches allow all students experience the chance to deliver their message to the rest of the class, provided that the others will listen and participate.